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| New Orleans cops disintegrated - 2/3 of the police missing post-Katrina! |
| 2005-09-04 |
| The National Guard was slow to move troops into New Orleans because it did not anticipate the collapse of the city's police force after Hurricane Katrina, the guard's commander said. Lieutenant General Steven Blum said the New Orleans police force was left with only a third of its pre-storm 1,500-person strength. Some police had families caught up in the disaster, others were unable to make it back to their precincts because of the flooding, and yet others left their posts after deciding the situation had grown too dangerous. That's the AFP explanation, not Blum's. There's another one, but it's a little less cheery. "The real issue, particularly in New Orleans, is that no one anticipated the disintegration or the erosion of the civilian police force in New Orleans," Blum told reporters here. "Once that assessment was made ... then the requirement became obvious," he said. "And that's when we started flowing military police into the theater." Blum said that since Thursday some 7,000 National Guard and military police had moved into the city. But he said any suggestion that the National Guard had not performed well or was late was a "low blow." The initial priority of the Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard forces was disaster relief, not law enforcement, because they expected the police to handle that, he said. "We were pulsing forces in in very degraded infrastructure -- airports had reduced capabilities ... in some cases we only had one road in because of lack of bridges, flooding, loss of infrastructure," he said. "So we couldn't rush to failure on this thing and we had to take a more measured approach on this thing than any of us wanted," he said. When it became apparent that disorder in New Orleans should be the most immediate priority, the National Guard waited until they had enough forces in hand to make an overwhelming show of force, he said. On Friday, while President George W. Bush was touring the stricken city, 1,000 military police and National Guard stormed the convention center where street gangs mixed in with thousands of others awaiting rescue had created a volatile situation, Blum said. "Had we gone in with a lesser force we may have been challenged, innocents may have been caught in a fight between the guard and military police and those who did not want to be processed or apprehended," he said. Bush, under intense criticism for the slow federal response, on Saturday ordered an additional 7,000 active duty and reserve ground troops to reinforce the National Guard. That would raise the level of US military forces committed to the relief effort -- active duty as well as national guard and reserves -- to more than 50,000 by the end of next week. Blum said that on Saturday there were 27,000 national guard troops in Louisiana and Mississippi. That number will grow to about 40,000 within the next week, he said. There were varying estimates of the number of active duty troops already in the area as part of the relief of operations before Bush's order. Major General Joseph Inge, deputy commander of the US Northern Command, put the number of active duty forces already on the ground at nearly 5,000 while Blum estimated the active force at 7,000, including sailors aboard navy ships. The additional troops ordered in from the active force include 2,500 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division, 2,700 from the 1st Cavalry Division and 2,000 from the 1st and 2nd Marine Expeditionary Forces. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #17 g: Iraq's murder rate was, I think, 65 per 100,000. That is an amazing (and true) statistic. Don't think of New Orleans as just another American city. Think of it as Fallujah-lite. At least the enemy in this instance doesn't have RPG's or large caches of stockpiled ordnance for IED's - or the skills to use either. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-09-04 20:43 |
| #16 Mississippi also has a toxic waste problem... Gulfport, a port of entry of all things animal, chemical, etc. Ships and semi's (with cargo still aboard) have been destroyed and contents carried across the city. Mississippi got the Marines! |
| Posted by: Sherry 2005-09-04 20:37 |
| #15 Comparing apples to apples,there has been no similar collapse in Mississipi where several small towns and cities were hit even harder.(THe NO mess came after levees breached.) Complete lack of leadership. NO own hurricane plan states that city can EXPECT NO OUTSIDE HELP FOR AT LEAST 72 HOURS! |
| Posted by: Stephen 2005-09-04 20:29 |
| #14 OTOH, NYC had no advance notice and NO had five days. NYC suffered a paramilitary attack that could have been repeated or supplemented with additional attacks, NO suffered a hurricane like plenty of others it has endured except for its location and intensity. Argue all you want about the crisis comparisons, but the fact is both sets of leaders were under unbelievable pressure in real time. NYC did the job, all the way up and down the chain of organization. NOLA buckled at every rung. It's cultural. Hopefully that can be excluded out in the rebuild. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2005-09-04 19:17 |
| #13 Iraq's murder rate was, I think, 65 per 100,000. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2005-09-04 19:15 |
| #12 9/11 was localized. The subway system was 99% undamaged. The roads were passable, with the exception of about a few building blocks around WTC. LA will see less people killed but more infrastructure damage than 9/11. I suspect $20B is a low estimate for the Federal aid to the regions affected. New Orleans is also one of the most crime-ridden cities in the country. NYC's murder rate in 2004 was 6.25 per 100,000 population. New Orleans's murder rate was 54 per 100,000 population. That's a whole lot of murders. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-09-04 19:04 |
| #11 1 I don't remember this happening in NYC when 911 happened. Must be a cultural thing? I am cautiously going to offer up that comparasonsons to 9/11 are more dis similar. NYC had a flood of "manpower" at the willing and ready to move any mountain. NO seems to have suffered from a lack of manpower, dispursed at farther distances. It is almost as if all the first responders to 9/11 had to coordinate in PA, you would not have seen the same response... Just thinking out loud and I could be off base here. |
| Posted by: Capsu 78 2005-09-04 18:47 |
| #10 amen 115AS |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-09-04 18:33 |
| #9 So much of this is due to leadership. People key on the leader. When the leaders are running around, blaming everyone else, breaking down on camera, and making paranoid accusations*, then it should come as no surprise when everything falls apart. Contrast this vile New Orleans bunch with Pataki and Guiliani on 9/11. If Rudy and Pataki had panicked on 9/11, there would have been a similar breakdown in NYC. * I'm probably being too kind by characterizing them as paranoid. They are political opportunists of the worst sort. This is probably the game they've been playing all of their lives. Sit back, let things happen as they will, then shift the blame onto someone else when things go wrong. Only now, the stakes are much higher and the attention of the world is focused on them, so they sound shriller and more accusatory than they normally would. This is not about saving their city. It's about saving their sociopathic asses. They could give a rat's ass about the dead and dying. |
| Posted by: 11A5S 2005-09-04 18:17 |
| #8 NO French colony, like Haiti; NY Dutch/English colony. These influences are very persistent. Yeah, it's cultural. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2005-09-04 17:20 |
| #7 From LGF -- CNN reported major from the Hyatt this morning. "The first thing on his agenda this morning was to get hotel rooms in a place like Las Vegas for his police and firefighters? He wants them to get counseling?" Remember all the places NYC finest were sent? This guy thinks he's Rudy!!!! |
| Posted by: Sherry 2005-09-04 17:06 |
| #6 On top of which NO is drastically under-manned in the PD anyway. On a per capita basis NYC has 5 times the cops. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2005-09-04 10:52 |
| #5 A better analogy is the 1997 flood centered on Grand Forks, ND. There was a dike breech. There was sudden major flooding. There were people stranded. There even was some minor looting. However, the local police and State troopers put down the minor looting quickly. In the New Orleans case, the Mayor wasn't able to acknowledge that the police force would be unable to handle the emergency and the State wouldn't do so because they would be called 'racist'. Similarly if the Feds had said, "well we are coming in with force because we expect the police force to disintegrate", the Feds would have been condemned by the PC press, the Democrats, etc. |
| Posted by: mhw 2005-09-04 10:39 |
| #4 The NO police department is famous for corruption, drug-dealing, and even murder. One policewoman murdered her partner when she and her boyfriend robbed the restaurant he was moonlighting at. Another policeman murdered a citizen who had filed a brutality complaint upon him. Drug investigations were leaked to the suspects, and corruption investigations were leaked to the policemen involved. Think of it as a more sinister version of the movie The Big Easy. Brer, in NYC the policemen and firemen were almost inconceivably brave. Some of the NO policemen are almost inconceivably vile. We don't hear about the good ones, of course. And, although the destruction at the WTC was complete, it was also local. The rest of NYC was affected by smoke and debris, but there was no breakdown of order. The affected area in NO is much larger than the affected area of NYC. Sadly, the WTC attack left few people wounded. Thousands of people lined up to donate blood, but little of their donations were ever used. |
| Posted by: Eric Jablow 2005-09-04 10:27 |
| #3 He may be referring to the period when the Feds were busting the NOPD for corruption not too long back. They may have been subjected to Federal oversight for a period of time by DOJ. |
| Posted by: Angerong Uninelet1441 2005-09-04 09:17 |
| #2 "Now the chief of the New Orleans police, an organization so famously corrupt that it actually had to be put under Federal control, having watched 200 troopers simply walk off the job, is sitting around criticizing the National Guard for being late for doing the job he was supposed to be doing." - Jason von Steewyk Anyone know what he's talking about? And BrerRabbit, something in me suggests that the "anything goes" culture (yes, the one tied to Mardi Gras and that "national treasure" the Dems so badly want back) |
| Posted by: Edward Yee 2005-09-04 09:00 |
| #1 I don't remember this happening in NYC when 911 happened. Must be a cultural thing? |
| Posted by: BrerRabbit 2005-09-04 07:37 |